Last week I looked at the Straw Man Fallacy, today I want to explore the tu quoque fallacy. In Latin tu quoque (too kwo-kwee) means “you too”;  in fact, the phrase “you did it too” is a good, succinct account of this fallacy. A tu quoque occurs when one rebuts a particular criticism of one’s own position by showing one’s opponent’s position is subject to the same criticism; … [Read more...]

In my last Fallacy Friday I covered the The Genetic Fallacy, the error of arguing that an idea is false on the basis of where it originated from. Today I want to look at what’s known as the “straw man” fallacy. Origins of the Name This fallacy takes its name from a practice common in the middle ages. A knight would practice jousting by putting a straw man on a horse and … [Read more...]

A fallacy related to the one we looked at last week (the Ad Hominem fallacy) is the genetic fallacy. One commits the genetic fallacy if one argues that a proposition is false on the basis of where the idea originated from.  Like the ad hominem, this fallacy invokes a kind of psychological transference where one transfers one’s disapproval of the source of an idea to the content … [Read more...]

In my previous posts, What is an Argument? and Assessing Arguments, I spelt out some basics as to what an argument is and how to assess arguments. There I noted that a sound argument is one where the premises of the argument is trueand the argument is valid. It is impossible for an argument which is sound to have a false premise, this fact means that one cannot rationally … [Read more...]

In last week’s post, Fallacy Friday: What is an Argument?, we established that an argumentis a set of reasons (or premises) offered in support of a conclusion. We noted that arguments always have  two components: premises and conclusions. We also observed that premises sometimes can be implicit or unstated. Of course knowing what an argument is, in and of itself, does not help … [Read more...]

When I was doing my PhD at the University of Otago, Madeleine and I would try to save up for a “date night” once a fortnight.  Often we would go to the movies. On more than one occasion we would stand in the theatre and look at various options. Madeleine would suggest we see one movie and give some reasons, I would suggest another. After a few minutes we would settle on a movie … [Read more...]

Over the past few years I have occasionally been asked by para-church, church and home-schooling groups to put together a critical thinking or “mini logic” course, with a focus on fallacy spotting, and teach it to their youth. I have done this from time to time and have often found as many adults in attendance as youth; the demand for this sort of thing seems to be fairly high … [Read more...]